


The Litany of Touches

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: A touch of blood kink, Angst and Feels, Gratuitous Metaphor, M/M, Sadly not a single actual vampire, Sexual Content, Shaving Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:47:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8611024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: John Silver has never been touched this way before, and now he isn't sure that he can go without it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dee218](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee218/gifts).



> Happy birthday to the face that can launch at least a mid-sized armada! Sus, I'm sorry about the lack of actual vampires, but I hope this is still okay. I tried to give you things I thought you would like :*

A knock. The simple act of lifting one’s arm, forming a fist, and rapping one’s knuckles against the unforgiving wood of the door. There are a dozen ways to ask the unvoiced question: tentative, decisive, impatient, rapacious, worrisome, and shy are just half that Silver has thought of while his hand hovered an inch from the door. 

_Are you there? Will you answer? Do you still want me?_

So many questions unvoiced, yet choking him with their phantom fingers wrapped tightly around his neck, strangling his vocal cords, suffocating him with the weight of uncertainty. It’s only a knock: three short taps against the wood. _Let. Me. In._ His knuckles still resound with it, the insistence of it, the uncertainty of it. _Let me in._ He lowers his hand and he waits, waits to see if his unvoiced query will have a hoped-for response.

***

The first time they made love, John wept. Flint… _James_ was asleep on the cot behind him, his broad chest rising and falling against the shoulder blades protruding out of John’s back, arm slung across John's rib cage. John lay there like a tortoise, all balled up inside his shell. He imagined his bones were an exoskeleton, protecting him from the outside world. But the outside world had never touched him the way James had.

Such a gentle touch. It shook something loose in John, and so he wept. Not for any contemporaneous emotion of sadness, no. He wept for John Silver of long ago, before he had ever been John Silver, for the young man, for the young boy who had never known such gentle touch until James placed his hands upon him. 

The way James had looked at him, with such naked wonder, while his hand trailed up John’s flank and over the outline of his ribs. Kisses pressed against the hollow of his neck, such tender kisses trailing a collier across his collar bones. Whispered words of passion, of encouragement, of awe. “My god, you are so beautiful, it sometimes hurts to look at you.” And John had shivered then. His entire body consumed by a single shudder that started at his hairline and traveled down to his loins and even further to the place where once upon a time he used to have ten toes.

No, he had never known such a gentle touch before. 

There had been scores of touches, some of which he even welcomed. The firm hand of a whore, for example, mechanical in its machinations. The bored and curious hands of youthful companions on murky nights spent in orphanage cots that were both too narrow and too hard to be comfortable. The hungry hands that had touched him when he needed a way to feed himself but had not yet found it in himself to kill for his supper. Those hungry hands had not been gentle. Sister Mary Elizabeth’s cane had not been gentle, even though he had deserved it, even though it had been for his own good.

His mother must have once touched him gently, when he was a baby, before she had died and gone where he seemed incapable of following her. 

The executioner’s axe, for that is the only way John can think of it, had not been gentle when it took his leg. It was then that it dawned on John he would never be touched again, not in passion, not in desire. Not gently. Not like this. Not the way James touched him.

The hot furnace of James’ mouth, trailing blazing paths over John’s flesh. Lips that asked “May I?” and planted bruises as beautiful as roses on the pale expanses of John’s thighs, in the furrows of his groin, next to the sun-ripened berries of his nipples. James had turned his entire body into a garden, and John had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, woken up and beheld that he was naked. And so he wept. 

***

It is truly terrifying to think he might never be touched that way again, for having had that sweet taste of Eden, how can he survive being cast out?

The locked door looms before him like the Cherub at the gates of Paradise. _Let me in._

At last, there’s movement on the other side. The latch slides, the hinges creak, and James is there in the doorway, wearing nothing but his long shirt which has long ago ceased being white (if it ever had been). It falls to his mid-thigh, where John can see the soft tufts of auburn hair that he so loved kissing when last they had lain together. Each time: a revelation. Each time: a new miracle. And yet, he fears that each time may be the last.

But he isn’t cast out this time. James smiles, his gorgeous lips, too sinful to belong in a man’s face, twitch at the corners and send a spark of joy up to his eyes of turbulent green. He moves out the way, allowing John entry into the cabin.

***

They don’t speak much, not when they’re together like this. For men who have had such intimate knowledge of the power of words, men who use them as weapons, words can cut like steel. And they don’t want to cut. They do enough of it as captain and quartermaster. In that world, beyond the door of James’ cabin, they’re Captain Flint and Long John Silver. In that world, with so much at stake, they never shut up.

It is such a relief to shut up. To speak only with one’s hands, to use one’s mouth for anything other than speech, to discover ways of saying “I need you” and “Don’t leave me” without ever having to lend voice to that terrible thought. Such words would have laid them both even more bare than they already are.

John presses his face into the heat of James’ neck, his hand tracing the powerful ligaments in that thick column that throbs with passion and fury. Against the skin of his palm that holds James in place, James swallows, his breath hitches against the weight of John's thumb. John can stay here forever, doing nothing but inhaling the comforting aroma of this man’s neck. Even his scent is gentle. It doesn’t stifle or overpower him, doesn’t claim him as his own. It just _is_. No one has ever smelled or felt so right before, so much like belonging. It makes a part of John want to claw James’ chest open, to burrow inside him and lie there, wrapped around his heart. To keep James safe; to keep them both safe.

“I should have shaved,” James mutters into John’s hair, while the feel of rough stubble prickles against his fingertips as they trail over his lover’s neck.

The words are out of John’s mouth before he has time to reflect, “Let me?”

The water basin sits close to the window, its contents kept warm by the Caribbean sun and humid air. James places it on a chair next to the cot and hands John a narrow wooden box along with a cracked bar of soap, as he sits back down. The gravity of the box in John’s hands does not quite sink in, but when he pushes at the lid and sees the straight blade of the razor, his stomach drops and his confidence oozes out with the droplets of sweat that form on his forehead. His trepidation must be written all over his face, because James simply places his hand over John’s and presses the blade into his palm.

“I trust you.”

Well, and ain’t that a thing? John swallows and dips a towel into the basin of warm water before pressing it carefully against the skin of James’ neck and face, to soften the coarse hairs. If he’s going to do this, he might as well do it properly. He works the soap into a lather and applies it along the sharp edges of James’ cheeks. His captain's face has filled out again; gone are the sharp angles that haunted John in the doldrums, gone are the hollows under his eyes. And the way James looks at him, with such tender wonder, it still makes John avert his gaze and try to focus on the task at hand instead. His hands move carefully over the stubble-peppered skin, until the soap is evenly spread across James’ neck and under his chin, avoiding his beard.

“Don’t you dare shave it off,” James’ admonishes playfully, as John’s hand reaches for the razor again.

“As if I would ever raise a hand against such fierceness,” John smiles back. 

As if he ever would. That perfectly groomed islet of red is all that is left to remind John of the burnished flames of Flint’s hair. That must have been when he had last seen this very straight blade, the night Flint had turned it upon himself. 

He had feigned sleep: between the exhaustion from the constant pain and the laudanum Howell kept slipping him, it wasn’t hard to pretend. He lay there and watched Flint through the canopy of his own lashes, watched as his hand wavered and his eyes closed and the blade trembled far too close to Flint's throat. And then, just as John was about to halt him, he watched as Flint began to shave off his hair, right there, in the cabin of the Fucking Warship, before they’d even set foot back in Nassau. Flint had thought him asleep, but even so, he had rubbed at his swollen eyelids, not letting a single errant tear escape. Perhaps, that well had dried up long ago. John wondered if his own ever would.

His fingers tug gently at the skin of James’ face as he pulls it tight for the blade, before sliding it down carefully, shaving with the grain. He knows the lines of James’ face, he’s traced them countless times with his fingers, his lips, his eyes, and retraced them again in his thoughts and memories. Each stroke of the blade reveals skin that feels so tender under John’s thumb that he almost asks if James feels as renewed as he feels. He’s concentrating so hard, his tongue is hanging out of the side of his mouth, and he isn’t even aware of it until James lifts a finger to tuck it back in.

“Christ!” John’s hand trembles. “God’s sakes, don’t laugh!”

“You look like a deranged poodle,” James giggles. 

Laughing makes him look ten years younger, John notes and bites at his lover’s earlobe in a rather pathetic attempt at display of dominance. “I’m holding a razor to your throat,” he purrs against James’ skin and waits for the bursts of laughter to subside.

“Yes,” James replies, his eyes aglow with a warm flame, “that you are.”

“May I resume?” John asks, adopting his sternest voice and lifting the blade up again, placing it below James’ chin and dragging it deftly over the length of his neck, being careful not to nick the skin pulled tightly over the Adam’s apple. “What kind of man insults another man while he’s pressing a deadly weapon against his jugular, hm?” 

James clearly has a very morbid sense of humor, because another burst of laughter escapes him, and this time it really does cause John’s hand to slip and nick his skin. John gasps and pulls back, watching with helpless wonder as a ruby bead slowly forms on the newly smooth skin. It hangs there like a jewel, sparkling in the early evening sun, and John looks down at the blade in his hand and stills, awash in a sea of confusion.

“It’s all right,” James murmurs, his words caressing John, bringing him back to the present from the lost shores of his thoughts. “It happens.”

John's eyes travel slowly back up James’ body, taking in the by-now familiar scars that cover his lover's torso and chest. He lets his gaze linger, possessiveness welling up inside him, just as the drop of blood on James’ neck fills until at last its own weight pulls it down, and John lunges forward to staunch it with his tongue and with his lips. _Mine. All mine._ James gasps against him, his heart speeding up as John presses forward, his tongue pushed against the tiny nick in James’ skin as if it were the fountain of life. The taste of metal and salt melts against his tongue, spiced with the foreign remnants of soap that do not quite mix with the familiar taste of James’ skin. Would James’ tears taste the same? And then, a hand alights on the back of his skull, pressing him closer.

***

They make love with John straddling James’ lap, his hair falling into James’ face as he looks up at John with those eyes that burn too hot and see too deeply. The first time James had ever laid a hand on John, it had been to press a knife against his throat. Now, his hands trail softly over John's chest, trace down the long, sinewy ligaments of John’s neck, press into the moisture of his armpits as James’ fingers curl to grasp at John and pull him more surely over his cock. John’s hair gets everywhere, even between their lips as their mouths try to seek each other out, and James laughs again and calls him beautiful. And John grinds lower, against James’ lap and thighs, his own cock stabbing furiously into the slick hardness of James’ stomach, as if trying to fuck and get fucked at the same time. 

“Don’t let go,” he moans against James’ lips.

“No. Never.”

Those aren’t the exact words John wants to say, but it’s as close as they ever get to it. In the meantime, there is only the world between the palms of James’ hands.

James’ hands on the small of his back.

James’ hands on the tender skin behind his knees.

James’ hands tracing the veins of John’s own hands.

John has never been touched this way before. He cries out James’ name into his mouth as his body shudders. John’s never been touched this way before and now he doesn’t want to ever be touched by anyone else. At dawn he’ll have to leave. But come nightfall, he will knock on the cabin door again. Three taps. _Let. Me. In._ And he knows, he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his call will be answered.


End file.
